


The Ghost of the Boy Who Wielded the Knife

by aktura



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Have a Dog, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, IT Chapter Two Fix-It, M/M, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, no beta we die like our favorite characters in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25136509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aktura/pseuds/aktura
Summary: Richie remembers what he used to feel when he looked at Eddie – the ancestral ghost of what he still feels right now as he takes in the way Eddie moves around the room – a longing that still feels strong and bone-deep and as hopeless as the boy who rode his bike all the way out to the Kissing Bridge alone to carve their initials into forever.Sometimes a dog's just a dog, and what's behind a door is actually Not Scary At All – sometimes, it might even be a new beginning.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	The Ghost of the Boy Who Wielded the Knife

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how this happened. One moment I'm enjoying a stupid clown movie, and next thing I know my heart is shattered into a million pieces and I'm knee deep in an all-day fix-it writing spree.
> 
> So here, enjoy my one and only contribution to this fandom, which I am proofreading and posting at 1 AM.

–––– o ––––

“Sit,” Richie says, and the fucking tiny little dog sits back on its haunches and blinks up at them. Its eyes are so big and black that Richie thinks he can see both himself and Eddie reflected in them. 

“He did it,” Eddie says. 

“Oh, that’s cute.”

“That’s a good boy.”

“That’s actually super cute.”

“That’s a _good boy!_ ” Eddie throws Richie a glance. “Make him do something else.”

“Roll over,” Richie tries, and the dog flops over on its back and wiggles its little legs in the air as it tries to turn onto its side.

“Look at its feet!”

“Yeah, that’s adorable.”

“You don’t think—” Eddie says, and Richie shrugs. 

“Seems harmless. Or—” he squints down at the dog. “Or maybe he’s still fucking with us.”

Eddie looks back the way they came, the passage now blissfully devoid of any kind of mutant clown-appendage. “So, you wanna…”

“Only one way to find out,” Richie says, and then he bends down to pick the squirming dog up, ignoring the way Eddie tugs at the back of his jacket and hisses _It’s gonna bite your fucking face off!_

Richie holds the dog at arm’s length – just in case – and looks it over. It looks like a dog. It certainly feels like a dog. He sniffs at it. Smells like a dog, too. The dog licks its nose, tongue lolling out of its mouth as it pants, body shaking with the force of how hard it’s wagging its tail. 

“He looks like a Chester,” Richie decides. 

Eddie looks disproportionately outraged for some reason. “You’re _naming_ it? Are you fucking shitting me? And _Chester?_ Like _The Nanny?_ The fuck?!”

Richie tucks the dog under his left arm and feels it slobber all over his wrist. Then he carefully steps into the tunnel. “You’re the one who got the fucking reference,” he says, and grins when Eddie starts to sputter. 

Richie takes the lead, and they slowly make their way deeper into the tunnel. It gets darker the further they go, its walls growing narrower and its ceiling lower, and after a hundred feet or so Richie finds himself forced to stoop unless he wants to hit his head.

“You alright back there?” he says, and then, “Oh, who am I kidding. You probably haven’t even noticed, have you?”

“Shut up, fuckface,” Eddie hisses, and Richie thinks he might have been about to add something else, but then the tunnel veers off sharply to the left and they suddenly find themselves stumbling back out into the open space of the cavern and all the horrors that entails.

They hear the clown before they see it. It’s a dark shadow in the sickly blue light, looming over Mike and laughing as it uses one of its tentacle-leg-things to pull him closer. It says something, but Richie is too far away to hear the words, and then its jaws open wide – rows and rows and rows of teeth – seemingly fully intent on tearing into Mike and rendering flesh from bone. 

“Fuck,” Richie breathes, attempting to hold onto Chester as the dog tries to squirm out of his arms. “Fuck, Eds—”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, taking a deep breath. “Fuck this shit.”

He pulls his arm back, and then he’s throwing the broken piece of fence at It’s back, hurling it like a spear. The improvised weapon cuts through the air like it’s made for it, and Eddie’s aim proves strong and true as the fence piece digs deep into the monster’s back.

It yowls, rearing up on its hind legs and throwing Mike aside as it reaches back to claw at the would-be spear. And it looks almost comical, this behemoth clown screeching in rage as it turns and twists, desperately trying to pull the piece of fencing free of its body.

Richie can’t understand why it’s acting so wounded – like a hulking lion throwing a fit over a splinter in its side – but he also doesn’t care because—

“You hurt it,” he breathes, reaching out, fumbling for the back of Eddie’s jacket and fisting his hand in the fabric, gripping it tightly. “Eds! You _hurt_ it!”

“How you like that?!” Eddie screams at It.

He’s trembling with so much rage and fear that Richie can physically feel it. It vibrates up through his fingers where he’s gripping Eds’ jacket, running up his arm, only growing worse as It finally manages to yank the fence piece free of its back. The clown roars as it hurls it at the cavern wall, the metal striking the rock, kicking up dust and falling, but sound of the impact is lost in It’s snarl as the monster whirls around and sets its eyes on them.

“You ain’t _shit!_ ” Eddie shouts as It comes for them, claws and teeth bared, and Richie presses closer to him, clutches Chester against his shoulder and braces himself for— for _something_ , something painful and final, but the monster—

The monster fucking _flinches_. 

“You heard me!” Eddie yells, and he sounds so _angry_ – deep-in-his-bones-angry in a way Richie’s never heard before. 

Richie watches It rear back, hissing like it’s been slapped in the face, like Eddie hurt its _feelings_ , which is _ridiculous_ , but—

“Yeah!” Richie finds himself shouting, voice mingling with Eds’. “Yeah, you— you pasty-ass motherfucker! You heard us!”

“You’re just a clown!” Mike’s voice calls out from the other side of the cavern. 

The monster screeches and whirls around, brandishing its claws, as more voices join in. 

“You’re a weak old woman!”

“A headless boy!”

“I AM THE EATER OF WORLDS!” It roars, lashing out with its claw-blades but falling short, stumbling away as Bev takes a step forward.

“You’re a fucking bully!” she screams, and the rest follow.

“Impostor!”

“Mimic!”

“Just a fucking clown!”

“Yeah!” Richie shouts, pushing Eddie ahead of him as they hurry along the perimeter of the cavern, flanking the bulk of the monster and joining the others in their advance. “A dumb fucking clown!”

“A leper!” Eddie spits in Its direction, and Bill clenches his fists and screams:

_“I’m not afraid of you anymore!”_

“Clown! Clown! Clown!”

It growls and hiccups and whimpers, growing smaller, body shifting and distorting as it deflates. 

“I am the Eater of Worlds!” It rasps, stumbling, dragging itself away, weakly swiping at them with its claw whenever they get too close. “Eater of Worlds!”

And Richie—

Richie’s had enough. He’s done. 

He pushes Chester at Eddie, barely waiting for the dog to be secure in Eds’ arms before he’s rushing forward, into the fray – he grabs for the claw, pulling, feeling the sinew and bone and flesh flex beneath his fingers before the socket gives way, like yanking rotten meat off the bone. And then he throws the appendage to the side as It continues to shrink, growing smaller and smaller until there’s almost nothing left – a mouth full of teeth and an empty husk surrounding a still-beating heart that fits in the palm of Mike’s hand.

“Look at you,” Pennywise says, a note of horrified wonder in his voice. “You’re all grown up.”

And then he begins to laugh, even as Richie cups his hand around Mike’s, feeling the warmth of Eddie’s fingers covering his, and they squeeze and squeeze and _squeeze_ until there’s nothing left.

–––– o ––––

They make it out of the house, but just barely. 

Richie grabs Eddie and pulls him into a hug that Eddie doesn’t return, but that’s alright because he’s still holding the dog; Richie rests his temple against the side of Eds’ head instead, breathing hard as he watches the dead tree in the yard finally topple over, and he can feel Eddie slowly lower his forehead to rest against Richie’s shoulder as Chester squirms between them.

They head to the quarry, bloodied and bruised and exhausted, and Bev is the first one over the edge but Richie’s not watching her. He’s watching Eddie, and the way he’s still cradling Chester like he’s afraid to let go.

“I can’t believe I forgot about you,” Richie tells him as first Ben and then Bill disappear into the blue, and it’s true but at the same time not, because there’s been an empty space inside Richie that he’s spent the past twenty-seven years trying to fill – with booze, with drugs, with one night stands – and nothing has ever seemed to do the job.

And maybe it’s an Eddie-shaped hole, or— or maybe Eddie carved it out of him in such a way that no one and nothing else will ever know the right way to fill it back up. Richie doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a lot of things, like what’s going to happen now, or how he’s going to feel when it’s done, but he’s got abso-fucking-lutely nothing left to lose.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, fingers flexing in Chester’s fur as Mike jumps, “I’m surprised you forgot about the guy who’s been fucking your mom so good.”

Richie shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Eds. Man, I’ve— I’ve been in love with you for thirty fucking years.” 

And then he runs and he flies and he plummets, and he’s never felt so light before.

–––– o ––––

Richie loses his glasses in the off-green water somewhere on the way down. 

Bev and Ben help him look, and by the time he’s able to see again he spots Eddie sitting at the edge of the water with Chester on his lap. He looks bone dry, so he must have made his way down to the waterline by foot, and now he’s waiting for them, one hand resting on the dog’s back to make sure it doesn’t wiggle free and run away, and the other carefully scooping up quarry-water to wash the dust off his face.

“Oh, he _hates_ it,” Ben says.

His voice carries across the surface of the water, and Eddie’s head jerks up as he shoots them a glare. They all laugh, and Richie leans back, pushing his feet off the bottom and spreading his arms and closing his eyes against the midday sun.

He floats, weightless.

–––– o ––––

Eddie shoves Chester at him two minutes into their walk back to town.

“You should get him checked,” he says. “Y’know, for a microchip.”

“Fucking microchip,” Richie says. “What, you think the clown had him microchipped?”

“No, you fucking idiot, I think maybe the clown _took him_ from someone who had him microchipped.”

Richie hums. “I don’t fucking care,” he says, scratching Chester behind the ear as the dog pants hot, stinky breaths into Richie’s face, “I’m keeping him.” 

Eddie makes a face but doesn’t say anything else.

It’s a long walk back.

–––– o ––––

The scars disappear. And just like that, it’s easy to pretend nothing of it ever happened.

Except Richie’s body’s still bruised, and Eddie’s got that fucking bandage covering half his face, and, once they get back to the hotel where he left his cellphone, thirteen voicemails from his wife waiting on him.

Richie watches Eddie pace as he listens to the first four, and he wonders if Eddie ever thinks of his mother when he looks at Myra. If he remembers what she did – the pills and the doctor’s appointments – and if he regrets it. 

He must remember now, at least, because Richie remembers _everything_. He remembers what he used to feel when he looked at Eddie – the ancestral ghost of what he still feels right now as he takes in the way Eddie moves around the room – a longing that still feels strong and bone-deep and as hopeless as the boy who rode his bike all the way out to the Kissing Bridge alone to carve their initials into forever.

Eddie lets the phone drop onto the bed and then he follows, sitting down heavily on the mattress.

“I can’t do this,” he sighs. “Richie.”

Richie’s always considered himself fluent in all things Eddie, but some things are too vague to interpret.

“I have an apartment,” he says instead of trying. “In New York. I mean, I have one in Las Vegas too, because I’m out there a whole fucking lot, but I’m based out of New York.”

It’s pretty funny when you think about it. Not ha-ha funny, but maybe chuckle-at-the-irony funny. Just— the fact that they both live there, in the same city, maybe even within a few miles of each other, but they’d never know it because there are eight million other people there too. And even if they did meet in the street they wouldn’t have recognized each other, so maybe they already have, plenty of times, and maybe Richie has looked the love of his life in the eyes hundreds if not thousands of times before and then kept on walking because he hadn’t been able to remember.

See? Pretty funny.

He shoots out of his chair, stumbling over to the desk by the window. There’s some hotel stationary there, and a pen, and he writes down his address, and the number to his cellphone, and his manager’s phone number too, for good measure.

Because they’re not going to talk about it, not right now. Maybe not ever. Richie knew this when he first forced his way into the room, unwilling to let Eddie out of his sight even hours after climbing out of the waters of the quarry like a man reborn, and he’s said his peace. He’s bared it – the one secret that he never thought he’d be able to tell anyone, and it’s Eddie’s turn now. The ball’s in his court.

Richie digs into his pocket and retrieves his keys, and it takes him a couple of minutes to get the apartment key off the ring because his fingers feel stiff like they’re frozen, and Eddie’s watching him from the bed, and he fumbles before he manages to free the right one. 

He places it on the stationary, careful to not let it cover the information he’s scrawled onto the pad, because that seems important at the moment.

“I’ve got dates in Reno,” he says. “Next few weeks. So I won’t be back until the seventeenth.” He taps the stationary with his right index finger, next to the key, and then he turns to look at Eddie. “You can keep it, or you can leave it for me at the front desk.”

Eddie just looks back at him, and something inside Richie twists into an unimaginable shape because the expression on Eds’ face is like it always was, like they’re not almost thirty years too late. For anyone else, it might be enough to give hope.

“You’re a risk analyst,” Richie says. “So analyze the risk.”

And then he walks out, and closes the door behind him, and goes outside to see if the pet shop on 4th is still in business, because Chester needs a collar.

–––– o ––––

He drives by the Kissing Bridge on his way out of town, and he slows down, and he stops, but he doesn’t get out of the car.

If he looks closely enough he thinks he might still see it – both the carving and the ghost of the boy who wielded the knife – but it’s probably his imagination. The boy’s long gone and the carving will be weather-worn by now, faded and nearly invisible beneath the newer additions.

He’ll bring Eddie here, he decides. He’ll bring him here, and he’ll show him the foundation they have to build on, and they’ll either re-carve the fucking thing together or not at all.

–––– o ––––

New York is a quick pit-stop. 

He gets the spare apartment key from his manager and arranges for a new copy to be made – just in case – and then he stows car in the garage, and packs his bags with a fresh set of clothes, and takes Chester to visit a vet – no fucking microchip, suck on _that_ , Eds – before boarding him at a kennel that doubles as a doggy day spa and costs fucking twice as much as what Richie’s own two-week stay in Reno will. 

He makes sure to give Eddie’s name to the woman behind the desk, and leaves the kennel information on the kitchen table in his apartment, and he doesn’t really know why – has no idea what he’s expecting.

On the flight out he opens his laptop and starts writing. It’s mostly shit – bland jokes and old stories no one’s gonna pay to hear him tell – but he doesn’t care.

It might suck, but it’s _his_.

–––– o ––––

A couple of days later, Mike calls him about Stan’s letter. He catches Richie about half an hour before he’s set to go on stage, and when he hears that Richie’s not home Mike reads him his own copy over the phone, but only after Richie asks.

_I lived my whole life afraid. Afraid of what would come next. Afraid of what I might leave behind. Don't_ , Stan writes.

And Richie steps out on stage and tells an audience of five hundred people, “I’ve got some new stuff for you tonight, and I think you’re going to fucking love it,” and some of them don’t, but a lot of them do.

_If you find someone worth holding on to, never ever let them go_ , Stan tells them, and under the brightness of the stage lights, Richie hopes that Eddie reads the letter too.

Because it’s Eddie’s choice. That’s what Richie’s come to realize. 

It’s always been Eddie’s choice.

–––– o ––––

Richie flies back on the seventeenth, right on schedule.

He takes a cab home, and he doesn’t stop by the front desk of his apartment building to ask if a key or a message has been left for him, just like he never called them while he was in Reno to check if he’d had any visitors while away.

Because he doesn’t want the fucking key back, and he doesn’t want to hear a secondhand account of a goodbye from a virtual stranger and let that be his last memory of Eddie.

He rides the elevator up to his floor instead, and when he unlocks the door he imagines he can hear the sound of a small, annoying dog, only he’s not sure until he actually opens the door and Chester starts yipping at him, dancing on his tiny hind legs in the hallway.

Richie swoops down to pick him up, not so much because he’s happy to see him, but because he needs something to hold on to when Eddie walks out of the kitchen and says,

“Do you even know how many diseases you can contract from a dog?”

“No idea,” Richie says, and he’s staring at the comfy-looking tube socks Eddie’s wearing, the jeans worn soft with age, and the graphic T-shirt with a design so faded that you’d only ever wear it at home. And he knows that Eddie knows he’s staring, but Eddie also knows that Richie’s a loser because they’re both the same.

“Ringworm, Salmonellosis, Leptospirosis,” Eddie says, counting off on his fingers as Chester sneezes Richie in the face, “Giardia, Roundworms, Hookwo—”

“You’ve survived worse,” Richie says, grinning.

He’s giddy with the knowledge that it’s true.

–––– o ––––


End file.
